Year: <span>2005</span>
Year: 2005

Year: 2005

KDDI Designing Studio: Video Tour

KDDI Harajuku Design Studio TourJapan’s wireless industry provides some of the coolest mobile experiences on planet Earth. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that mobile players here are also masters at the street-level marketing of cell phones and wireless services — and KDDI’s Designing Studio is not only the latest over-the-top effort at creating a consumer-targeted mobile funland, it’s also the best. In today’s program, WWJ’s Gail Nakada speaks with the Studio’s general manager, tours five floors’ worth of interactive games, live handsets and mobile demos, and plugs into Harajuku’s ultimate mobile zeitgeist.

HP Opens RFID Lab in Japan

Anticipating that a 950-MHz band will be assigned for RFID applications in Japan, Hewlett-Packard Japan Ltd. will open a RFID verification facility in May in Japan with three partner companies. HP’s partner companies include Toyo Kanetsu Solutions K.K., IDEC Controls Ltd. and ThreeQ. Ltd., all of which are familiar with implementing logistics controlling systems in Japan. Designated an HP RFID Noisy Lab, the lab will be located in Toyo Kanetsu’s plant in Kisarazu, Chiba prefecture, similar to a U.S. lab HP operates in Omaha, Nebraska.

China's Exclusive Mobile TV Drama

China’s first TV drama to be shown exclusively on mobile phones will begin shooting on 27 March. Entitled “Appointment,” it will have five parts, with each only lasting five minutes. Catering to the interests of young people, who are more likely to watch TV plays on mobile phones, the drama is a romantic love story between a beautiful girl and two motorcycle riders, revealed Liu Hong, an official with the Beijing-based Leshi Media Group.

Mobile Media Partners With Kyocera for Asia Pacific

The Mobile Media Company, a leading independent provider of global wireless games, interactive entertainment services, and marketing applications, today announced an agreement with Kyocera Communication Asia Pacific Pte Ltd to offer its mobile entertainment services across the WebW@lkers platform. Kyocera Communication Asia Pacific Pte Ltd is a leading platform provider of information services, wireless hosting content, and consulting services for mobile operations and enterprises throughout the Asia Pacific. Through Kyocera’s directory portal, WebW@lkers, mobile users in the Asia Pacific region can receive information, mobile content, entertainment, and communication services, including news, wallpaper, ringtones, games, videos, and horoscopes.

Some of Japan's Cool New Apps

In a telephone interview with a research company in Toronto last night, I was asked for examples of the coolest new applications or services in Japan. Without a doubt, I answered, mobile music and the Chaku Uta Full song download services are really eating up packet bandwidth. The week before last, KDDI announced that the cumulative downloads for EZ Chaku Uta Full (provided via the CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN network) had surpassed 3 million as of 1 March 2005, less than four months after the 19 November 2004 launch. The company added that the 1 million and 2 million milestones were achieved on 5 January and 5 February, respectively.

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